Thursday Poem - This Time of Year

when the light leaves early, sun slipping down
behind the beech trees as easily as a spoon
of cherry cough syrup, four deer step delicately
up our path, just at the moment when the colors
shift, to eat fallen apples in the tall grass.
Great grey ghosts. If we steal outside in the dark,
we can hear them chew. A sudden movement,
they're gone, the whiteness of their tails
a burning afterimage. A hollow pumpkin moon rises,
turns the dried corn to chiaroscuro, shape and shadow;
the breath of the wind draws the leaves and stalks
like melancholy cellos. These days are songs, noon air
that flows like warm honey, the maple trees' glissando
of fat buttery leaves. The sun goes straight to the gut
like a slug of brandy, an eau-de-vie. Ochre October:
the sky, a blue dazzle, the grand finale of trees,
this spontaneous applause; when darkness falls
like a curtain, the last act, the passage of time,
that blue current; October, and the light leaves early,
our radiant hungers, all these golden losses.

Barbara Crooker, from Radiance

Wordless Wednesday - Reflection

Hitching A Rosy Ride

Beau and I usually notice our neighbor's bright red Toyota truck on our walks, but at this time of the year, his whole yard is a thing of beauty. The old maple that spreads its canopy over his driveway is doing its autumn thing and dropping heaps of leaves all over the truck's hood, an eye grabbing performance if there ever was one. Rounding the corner yesterday and seeing the place stopped us right in our tracks.

Villagers like to compare notes on the colours of local maples in autumn, and we tell each other about dazzling specimens, exchanging notes whenever we meet on dog walks. The reds have pride of place, but the golden acacias on Byron avenue often get a mention too, ditto the buttery birches, aspens and ginkgos nearby.

With the slow return of the village and its wild places to softer, more earthy hues, a little red (or gold) is a fine thing in late autumn. Ivan's truck and his magnificent maple fill us with quiet pleasure, every time we see them.

Sequestered, Week 316 (CCCXVI)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

You cannot buy the revolution.

You cannot make the revolution.

You can only be the revolution.

It is in your spirit or it is nowhere.

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed

October Song

Friday Ramble - Songs in a Different Key

Leaves crunching underfoot or rattling like sabres, ice crystals limning fences, blowsy plumes of frosted grasses, leaf strewn puddles on the trail—all are plangent leitmotifs in the windy musical work that is late autumn. At this time of the year, the woodland is an Aeolian harp, a vast musical instrument that only the wind can play.

The landscape is settling slowly into the subdued tints of early winter: bronzes, creams, beiges and silvery greys, small splashes of winey red, burgundy, russet, here and there touches of a deep inky blue almost iridescent in its sheen and intensity.

On our morning walks, frost forms sugary drifts on old wood along our path, dusts ferns and outlines fallen leaves almost transparent in their lacy textures. An owl's artfully barred feather lies in thin sunlight under the fragrant cedars down by the spring and seems to be giving off a graceful, pearly light of its own. The weedy residents of forest, field and fen cavort in fringed and tasseled hats.

One needs another lens and tuning for late autumn and early winter, a different sort of vision, songs in a different key. The senses are performing a seasonal shift of their own, moving carefully from longer, brighter days and grand summer happenings into the consideration of things small, still and muted, but complete within themselves and perfect, even when they are cold and wet and tattered.

There is light in the world, even in these dark times, and I have to remember that. My camera and lens never forget, and out in the woods, they drink in light like nectar. I am thankful that they do and that they remind me at every turning along on the trail—we are made of star stuff. We live in a sea of light.

Thursday Poem - Fall

Are the leaves embarrassed by this sudden change
from serviceable green to gaudy red and gold?
All those colors clanging in the wind: copper,
bronze, brass. And when they all fall down
will the empty branches miss them? Or are they
comforted by the feathery touch of birds,
their pale claws and tiny beaks? In the meadow,
the goldenrod is waving goodbye, nodding
above the bracken, the pearly everlasting.
The corn’s already been taken; only stalks
and stubble remain. This is the season
of diminishing returns. And what will we do
with that hour we gain when the clocks turn
back? Will it rattle in our pocket, empty
as the moon? 

Barbara Crooker

Wordless Wednesday - Fenced

Sequestered, Week 315 (CCCXV)

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

There are ways in, journeys to the center of life, through time; through air, matter, dream and thought. The ways are not always mapped or charted, but sometimes being lost, if there is such a thing, is the sweetest place to be. And always, in this search, a person might find that she is already there, at the center of the world. It may be a broken world, but it is glorious nonetheless.

Linda Hogan, The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir

Seeing Red

Friday Ramble - Hibernate

This week's word offering is rooted in the Latin hībernātus, past participle of the verb hībernāre (to spend the winter) and the noun hiems (winter), also the Greek cheimá (winter) and Sanskrit hima meaning cold, frost or snow. All forms probably originated in the Indo-European form ghei-, also meaning winter. Our word is kin to the mightiest mountain range on the planet, for the name Himalaya means "the abode of snow" in Sanskrit, hima (see above) plus alayah, meaning abode.

Most birds in the northern hemisphere migrate south, but other species of wildlife go dormant through the long white season, and we refer to the process as hibernating. Bears exhibit an elegant and impressive physiology as they hibernate through the winter in their leaf-strewn dens. Squirrels, prairie dogs, groundhogs and hedgehogs also den up when temperatures fall, sleeping until outside temperatures rise and food becomes available again. Northern frogs, toads, snakes and turtles are masters of the art of hibernation too.

Humans "do" hibernation too, and we do it in various ways. Some of us migrate to warmer climes to escape ice and snow and cold, but most of us simply withdraw from the outside world to warm dens of our own. Our protocols for getting through the long white season are highly personal. We retrieve shawls, sweaters and gloves from cedar chests, accumulate stacks of books, munchies and music. We kindle fires in fireplaces, pull the draperies closed and surround our winter selves with things that are warm, embracing, spicy and redolent of comfort. For me, a mug of tea and a favorite shawl in deep, earthy red are the right stuff.

I buy more cookbooks between now and springtime, make endless pots of tea and pummel bread dough, listen to classical music and jazz, pose still life camera compositions on tables and window sills, pile up leaning towers of reading material. The books brought home are usually hardcovers - there is something comforting about holding the real thing in one's hands, the way its thick creamy paper feels, the smell of the ink, the shapes of the illustrations and the typefaces used. I can get totally caught up in the color of a morning cup of tea, and I have to resist the temptation to add cinnamon sticks, anise stars and peperoncino to anything I brew or stir up in the kitchen. At this time of the year, it is almost impossible to pass trees, hedgerows and drifts of fallen leaves without getting lost in their golds and reds and bronzes.

Hibernation also means wandering around with a camera, trying to capture the light of the sun as it touches clouds, contrails and migrating geese, sparks across frost dappled fields, farm buildings and old rail fences. It's a meditative process holding out stillness and tantalizing glimpses of something wild, elusive and elemental. Ice, frost, snow and the paucity of light notwithstanding, it's all good, and something to be treasured. Every view is a wonder and no two images are ever the same, even when they were captured in exactly the same place.

Temperatures were below freezing overnight, and when I opened the draperies early this morning, there was frost in the garden. I had covered the remaining tomatoes in the veggie patch last night, and hopefully they have survived, but alas, my lovely big pot of basil has not.  When the sun rises, Beau and I will wrap up warmly and go off for a long walk in the crunchy leaves and sparkly grass. 

Thursday Poem - Unchurched

Autumnal sun streams through
these yellow maple leaves
translucent as stained glass.

The ground beneath my feet
is strewn with pine cones, acorns.
The random pattern of continuance.

Etched columns of pine and oak.
Incense of resin and fungi.
Great glacial stones for altars.

High winds and choirs of
minor breezes, the whispering hush.
It is the Sabbath. It is enough.

Dolores Stewart from The Nature of Things
(reprinted here with the late poet's kind permission)

Wordless Wednesday - Mum's the Word

October Lake

The lake is a quiet place in October. Its surface is untenanted by loons or ducks, by blundering humans or otters paddling effortlessly in the turbulent waters by Geddes bridge where the (Canadian) Mississippi river surges in. There is a deep gorge above the lake, and the river makes its entrance between the granite walls, roaring, flinging spray in all directions and at high speed. 

Only a few weeks ago, there were swimming birds, weekend boaters and fisher folk everywhere. Kids played on the beach and jumped off the raft anchored in the shallows nearby. Their parents tended fires on the shore that sent up smoke signals and made burnt offerings to the wild gods. The place had a festive air.

Sound in such places carries a long way, and on summer nights one could hear the wind in the trees on the far shore, outboard motors and canoe paddles moving boats along in the murk, laughter across the water. It was magic.

Now there is just us and the north wind. Beau and I are wrapped up against the bluster and the chilling damp that goes right to our blood and bones. We have each other, a thermos of tea, a field notebook and the camera. We are content.

Sequestered, Week 314 (CCCXIV)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.

Even more astounding is our statistical improbability in physical terms. The normal, predictable state of matter throughout the universe is randomness, a relaxed sort of equilibrium, with atoms and their particles scattered around in an amorphous muddle. We, in brilliant contrast, are completely organized structures, squirming with information at every covalent bond. We make our living by catching electrons at the moment of their excitement by solar photons, swiping the energy released at the instant of each jump and storing it up in intricate loops for ourselves.

We violate probability, by our nature. To be able to do this systematically, and in such wild varieties of form, from viruses to whales, is extremely unlikely; to have sustained the effort successfully for the several billion years of our existence, without drifting back into randomness, was nearly a mathematical impossibility.

Add to this the biological improbability that makes each member of our own species unique. Everyone is one in three billion at the moment, which describes the odds. Each of us is a self-contained, free-standing individual, labeled by specific protein configurations at the surfaces of cells, identifiable by whorls of fingertip skin, maybe even by special medleys of fragrance. You'd think we'd never stop dancing.

Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

Trees of Gladness

Friday Ramble - Edgy

This week's word has been around since the eleventh century, making its way to us through the Middle English egge, the Old English ecg, the Old French aiglent and the Old Germanic ecke, all meaning "corner". It is also related to the Latin acer meaning "sharp", and the Greek akmē meaning "point". At the root of it all is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) form ak- meaning "sharp". Kindred words in the English language include acerbic, acid, acrid, acumen, acupuncture, acute, eager, ester, exacerbate, hammer and selvedge as well as eglantine (or sweetbriar), an old world rose known for its formidable thorns.

An edgy time is this, for the old Celtic year is passing away, and we stand on the threshold of a brand new year, in the north a chilling contraption of fallen leaves and freezing earth, short days, darkness, frost and wind.

The eastern Ontario highlands always seem empty at this time of the year and rather lonesome. Except for Canada geese and a few intrepid herons, migratory birds have departed for warmer climes, and the lakes seem still and empty. Most of our wild forest kin are already hibernating or are thinking about doing it.

On early morning walks, the long shadows falling across our trail have edges as sharp as the finest examples of the blade smith's craft. The earth beneath our boots is firm, leaves are crunchy, and puddles along our way are rimed with ice. For all the emptiness, morning sunlight changes the landscape into something rich and elegant and inviting: glittering weed fronds artfully curved and waving, milkweed sculpted into pleasing shapes, bare trees twinkling like stars, the margins of blackberry leaves rosy and sparkling with frost crystals. The air is fragrant with cedar, spruce and pine.

These weeks always seem chthonic to me. That engaging word with its bewildering arrangement of vowels and consonants springs from the Greek khthonios, meaning "of the earth", and it is usually employed in describing subterranean matters and deities of the underworld. In using the adjective, we focus on what is deeper or within, rather than on what is apparent at first glance or resting on the surface. Implicit in the expression are notions of rest, sleep, fertility and rebirth - entelechy, mortality and abundance coexisting and enfolding each other in a deep embrace.

Thursday Poem - October

October. Its brilliant festival of dry

and moist decay. Its spicy, musky scent.

The church's parking lot deserted

except for this one witness,

myself, just resting there.

Somewhere a radio plays Flamenco.

A spotlight of sunshine falls on the

scattered debris. Blood-red and gold,

a perfect circle of leaves begins to whirl,

slowly at first, keeping the pattern,

clicking against the blacktop

like heels and castanets,

then faster, faster, faster. . .

round as a ruffle, as the swirling

skirts of an invisible dancer.

Swept off into the tangled woods

by the muscular breeze.

The hoarse cheering of crows.

Inside the dark empty church,

long cool shadows, white-painted wood,

austere Protestant candles thriftily snuffed,

Perhaps a note on the altar,

Gone dancing. Back on Sunday

Dolores Stewart, from The Nature of Things

Wordless Wednesday - Singing Their Way Home

Happy October!

Village, Scarlet and Bokeh

In the village, scarlets, plums and deep inky blues are creeping into view, their emergence out of summer's dusty greens motivated by cooler evenings and gently ruffling winds at nightfall. When Beau and I potter off in the morning, there are glossy coins of dew everywhere. No frost yet though...

In summer, a small gasp of koi or nishikigoi (錦鯉, "brocaded carp") makes its home in the shaded pond underneath this Japanese maple, but the fish are about to be moved to indoor tanks for the winter, and when they go, the pond will be a different place. I didn't know until recently that a colony of koi is called a gasp. Beau and I visit the pond and her maple on morning walks until all her leaves have fallen, and the waters below her branches are covered with snow.

As often as we witness the turning of the seasons and the vivid entities coming into being, the morphing of the village into deeper and more intense hues always takes us (and the camera) by surprise.  Autumn transformations are magics of a wilder kind, and I can't imagine living this old life without being among them, watching as they flare and swirl and dance, blithely remaking the world in stunning elemental colors.

Northern light dazzles the eyes, and it lingers lovingly on everything it touches in its journey across the eastern Ontario highlands at this time of the year. I wish I could paint everything it touches. Come to think of it, that is just what my lens is doing. All I do is hold the camera and point it. 

Sequestered, Week 313 (CCCXIII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

I don't know what gladness is or where it comes from, this splitting open of the self.
It takes me by surprise. Not an awareness of beauty and mystery, but beauty and mystery themselves, flooding into a mind suddenly without boundaries. Can this be gladness, to be lifted by that flood?

This is something that needs explaining, how light emerges from darkness, how comfort wells up from sorrow. The Earth holds every possibility inside it, and the mystery of transformation, one thing into another. This is the wildest comfort.

Kathleen Dean Moore, Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature

Nectar and Light

Friday Ramble - Oh, Those Cavorting Creepers

Days are warmish and sunny, and nights are downright cool. Some mornings, the grass in the park is a bit crunchy underfoot when we go out, but there hasn't been a killing frost in the village. In nearby rural areas, frost has already put an end to the growing season, and with October on the horizon, our turn is not far off. 

At the height of summer, we were on the trail into the woods a little after five in the morning, but the sun is not up until after seven these days, so we are later starting out. On chilly mornings, Beau wears his natty blue tartan jacket with its fleecy liner, and he is happy to do it.

I wear my green canvas jacket with a cotton turtleneck sweater underneath. Lacking much of a lining, the garment does not convey much warmth, but its deep hood and waxed surface shut out the wind and keep me dry in sudden showers. The garment has several deep pockets for items like glasses, keys, facial tissues, cell phone and poo bags, so taking a receptacle along for such things is not necessary. Women's coats seldom have enough pockets or deep enough pockets, and my topper is actually a man's jacket found on a clearance rack at Marshalls years ago. 

Wonder of wonders, here it is at last, the splendid performance put on every year by a cluster of Virginia creepers a few blocks from home. Most creepers in the area turn red and burgundy in late September, but this specimen does its own thing and dazzles the eyes with leaves in blazing orange and vivid teal. The hues on display are absolutely sumptuous, and every autumn, they gladden our hearts.

Nudged into action by sunny days and cooler nights, village trees have gotten the word and are throwing themselves joyously into what we (Beau and I) like to call hallelujah mode. Local maples cavort in flaming scarlet, birches and poplars wear buttery gold, and the beech sisters in the park delight our eyes in shimmering copper and bronze, all together a splendid seasonal coinage. On walks, we stop to look at the riches all around us, and it is a wonder we ever make it home again. 

Thursday Poem - Song for Autumn

In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with

mossy, warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come – six, a dozen –

to sleep inside their bodies? And don’t you

hear the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

Mary Oliver

Wordless Wednesday - Red